Elaine Coffman - [MacKinnon 04]

Elaine
Coffman

Blush sensuality level: This is a suggestive romance
(love scenes are not graphic).

Mackinnons series, book four.

Her husband murdered, Maggie Ramsay
is left the homeless widow of a Scottish duke. So she marries a California
lumber baron by proxy, and sails for California to meet Adrian Mackinnon,
without telling him about her three children.

Adrian wanted a beauty of a wife,
but what he got was plain Maggie, who captures the hearts of his lumberjacks.
She is close to capturing Adrian’s heart as well, until her children arrive,
and Adrian withdraws, leaving Maggie to realize she is in love with him. Yet,
the more she tries to show her love, the harder his heart becomes, and she
fears he is lost to her forever. Until fate intervenes, and tragedy strikes,
leaving Adrian to make a choice that will change his life forever.

A
Blush®
historical romance
from Ellora’s Cave

Take this sorrow to thy heart, and make it a part of
thee, and it shall nourish thee ‘til thou art strong again.

Longfellow, “
Hyperion
”

Scotland, 1856

Maggie Ramsay folded the last of her husband’s coats and
placed it in the open trunk. She stared at the assortment of clothing, each
piece recalling a memory, a happier time when the muscular frame of Bruce
Ramsay had filled it to perfection.

She slammed the lid down and turned away.

Bruce Ramsay was dead now, and no amount of staring at his
clothes would ever bring him back. She turned to the two servants standing
quietly by the door. A tightness in her chest threatened to rob her of her
composure, but she swallowed, forcing back the urge to cry. “This is the last
one,” she said. “You may take it downstairs.”

She watched in a disjointed fashion, unable to feel much of
anything as the two men lifted the great, humpbacked trunk by its worn leather
straps and carried it from the room. Maggie was tired. Never had she felt so
insignificant, so devoid of purpose or feeling. It was as if everything inside
her had died. She wondered if she would ever be able to feel again, or would
her life simply pass without her really noticing it had, just as it had this
past year? Would she simply wake up one morning and look in the mirror and see
an old woman looking back at her and wonder when it had all happened?

It was time to go now, but Maggie found it difficult to
leave Bruce’s room, knowing another link to him and the life they shared would
be severed. She turned to go, then hesitated, wondering if she should take one
last tour of Glengarry Castle, one last look at each room to commit it to
memory. She had been so happy here. She had been married in the tiny family
chapel behind the castle. Their three children were born here.

And now her husband was buried here.

No, she would not, could not, walk these halls again. The
Glengarry she knew belonged to the past, to happier times. Best to leave it
there. She sighed and picked up her muff, which lay in the tufted leather chair
that had been her husband’s favorite. Even now, the supple, worn leather
retained the shape of Bruce Ramsay’s beloved body.

Oh, Bruce, what will I do now? What will become of us?
She buried her face in the muff.
Please let it all be a bad dream. Let me
wake up now and see Bruce coming into the room, with Fletcher riding on his
shoulders. He will laugh when I tell him—laugh at the silly idea that he had
ridden his horse off the cliff. He, Bruce Ramsay, the finest horseman in the north
of Scotland. Oh, how he will laugh. He will put Fletcher down and stand there,
as strong and bonny and alive as ever, then he will take me in his arms and
kiss the lingering residue of pain away. He isna dead. He canna be. Not Bruce.
He was too full of life to die.

But he had.

She looked at his chair and willed him to be there, then
placed her hand in the seat, as if by doing so, she would feel connected to his
life.

She gasped at the shock of cold leather, and jerked her hand
away. The finality of it all swept over her with such force, she swayed upon
her feet, clutching the back of the chair to steady herself against the
dizziness, the weakness, that always came whenever she remembered. Despair and
grief seemed too great a burden, and she fought to find a faint thread of the
iron strength her husband always claimed she possessed.

Bruce Ramsay, the Duke of Glengarry, was dead.
They lied
,
she thought.
They lied when they said time heals all wounds.
It had been
a year ago that the splendid form of her husband had fallen, to be battered
upon the sharp-fanged rocks at the bottom of the cliffs that ran along
Scotland’s bleak northern coast. One long year, but the pain of it was still
with her. No explanation was ever given as to how the twenty-nine-year-old duke—an
expert horseman—managed to ride his horse off the cliff, or how the horse—an
intelligent animal—had been persuaded to go. In truth, Maggie had not been
given much time to wonder at all, for the duke’s bones had scarcely had time to
settle in his grave when she was drawn into a lengthy court battle with a
Lowlander by the name of Adair Ramsay.

Ramsay was no stranger to Maggie, nor was his claim
unfamiliar—that her late husband’s title was rightfully his. It had all started
two years ago, when a small, bespectacled man appeared before the massive doors
of Glengarry Castle, rapping soundly against the carved oak with the handle of
his walking stick, demanding with brusque authority to see the duke.

Once sequestered in Bruce Ramsay’s library, Adair Ramsay produced
papers declaring that Bruce’s claim to the dukedom was based upon falsified
information—church records that had been forged, and marriages that had never
taken place that had been recorded—things that had occurred during the times of
Bruce’s great-grandfather. He insisted that the tide belonged to his own
family, one that was, oddly enough, not connected to Bruce Ramsay’s line, in
spite of their common name.

Bruce declared the man an imposter and had him thrown out.
But Adair Ramsay was as persistent as he was canny. Over the next year, he
reappeared time and time again, and each time Bruce turned him away.

But the last time he came, he brought with him legally filed
documents, and a summons to a hearing in Edinburgh. Maggie and Bruce made the
journey to Edinburgh, and after two preliminary court hearings, the court ruled
in Bruce Ramsay’s favor.

After the last hearing, Adair Ramsay’s face was mottled with
rage. “I’ll be back,” he said. “You havena won yet.”

“Keep your ain fish guts ta your ain sea maws,” Bruce said.

After that, Adair seemed to disappear. For over two blessed
months, things were quiet, causing Bruce to observe to Maggie one evening over
a bowl of hotchpotch, “I dinna ken the fool has given up. He’s a determined
man, with a Scot’s tenacity and stubbornness, and the cunning of an
Englishman.”

The gruffness in Bruce’s voice couldn’t hide the hint of
intrigue the sudden silence of this man held for him, and Maggie picked up on
it. “Do you ken we’ve seen the last of him?”

“He’ll surface again, and I canna say that I’m no just a wee
bit curious to see what his next plan of attack will be.”

For some reason, Maggie never took the matter as casually as
Bruce had, prompting Bruce to laugh at her on more than one occasion. “My
overexcited little plover,” he said, taking her in his arms. “You bristle at
the sound of every approaching coach.”

Maggie pulled away and wagged a scolding finger at him.
“Laugh, if you please, but there is something about the man I dinna trust. He
has narrow, shifty eyes, and his lips snarl back, away from his teeth.”

Bruce laughed. “You canna convict a man on the basis of
shifty eyes and bared teeth.”

“You may not, but I can. Have you no noticed how he willna
look you in the face when he speaks to you? He’ll no rest until he has your
title, and all of us tossed into the loch.”

Bruce took her in his arms. “Come here, my little cloker.”

“Och! Dinna be calling me a broody hen,” she said, giving
his ears a box, “when you ken I am right.”

“Aye, I ken you are right, lass,” Bruce said, his tone
turning somber. “He’s a typical Lowlander, and I dinna trust him.”

A week later, an urgent dispatch had come, summoning Bruce
to Edinburgh.

He left immediately, but never made it there.

Two days later, the body of the Duke of Glengarry and that
of his horse were found upon the jagged rocks that were hungry to devour
anything that fell upon them.

One month after her husband’s death, Margaret Sinclair
Ramsay was taken to court in what proved to be a lengthy battle against Adair
Ramsay, who hoped to claim the title now inherited by Maggie’s young son,
Fletcher.

“Dinna worry, lass,” Maggie’s father, the Earl of Caithness,
had said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

In years past, a letter from the Earl of Caithness would
have moved mountains. But times were changing in Scotland, and the old ways
were dying out. The Earl of Caithness was old and almost blind, and because of
that, he hadn’t been to Edinburgh in over fifteen years. His name didn’t carry
the power it once had; in truth, not many in Edinburgh even recognized his name
at all.

It was about this same time that Maggie learned her father
was not only in poor health, but that he was virtually penniless and in danger
of losing his vast estates.

Unable to count upon her aging father, and having no other family
to turn to, she was forced to stand alone, aided only by a few loyal friends.
In what was termed by many as “the most shameful case to ever be tried in
Scotland”, the title of Duke of Glengarry was stripped from young Fletcher
Ramsay and awarded, along with the accompanying land and estates, to Adair
Ramsay.

A shattered Margaret Ramsay was given notice. She had two
weeks to vacate Glengarry Castle.

Alone, homeless and widowed, with no means of support,
Maggie had packed all of her personal items, saving her husband’s things for
last. Now not even that task remained. Only minutes ago the footman had
announced that her children and their nanny awaited her in the coach.

Her life at Glengarry had come to a sad, sad close.

She took a parting look around the room, if for no other
reason than to make sure she hadn’t left any of her husband’s personal effects
behind.

Maggie sighed and rubbed the chill from her fingers. She had
done her job well; nothing but the furnishings remained, furnishings that now
belonged to Adair Ramsay. There was nothing more to be done, yet she was
reluctant to go. Perhaps this was because she really had no place to go, save
her father’s home. Yet, as she made the decision only this morning to return to
the home of her girlhood, she couldn’t help wondering just how long it would be
before she and her children would be forced from there as well.

Hearing a discreet cough, she turned to see the minister,
David MacDonald standing just inside the door. Maggie seemed to recover,
attempting, at least, to collect herself. “I’m sorry you came all this way for
nothing, David. It’s time for me to go. The children are already downstairs
waiting for me in the carriage.”

“I ken that before I came up here. I spoke to them for a
moment.” He stopped speaking and gave her a pleading look. “Maggie, I want a
minute with you.”

“I’m sorry. I dinna…” Maggie sighed and drew her wool shawl
higher, covering her shoulders. “I dinna want to speak of religion right now. I
canna. Perhaps later…when I’ve had time to heal.”

“Now is the time you need God the most.”

Maggie turned away. “My needs dinna seem to matter to God.”

“God moves in strange ways, lass. He will be your refuge and
strength. He willna turn His back on you.”

“He already has.” She turned back, but the light had faded
from her eyes. “Do not speak of God so much. I fear He has all but forgotten
me.”

“You feel that way because there is too often strife between
God’s ways and man’s ways. You must hold to your faith, lass. It willna desert
you in time of trouble.”

“Faith,” she repeated slowly. “I canna hold to something
that seems to contradict itself. I dinna ken if I even believe in faith
anymore.”

“That is your pain speaking, not your heart.”

Maggie lapsed back into silence, staring at the Reverend
MacDonald without really seeing him. Pain. Aye, she had plenty of that. It had
been her constant companion of late. First with Bruce, and then with her
youngest daughter, Ainsley.

Ainsley. One small girl, one small name, yet a powerful
reminder. Maggie would go to her grave with the memory of the day Bruce was
buried etched upon her mind. How she wished she could go back in time, to undo
the damage that had been done that terrible day. If only she had known Ainsley
had awakened from her nap and wandered down the stairs alone, seeking her
mother, and stepping into the parlor, where the battered body of Bruce Ramsay
lay. Never, ever would Maggie forget the shattering scream that ripped from
Ainsley’s throat, the horror in her terrified eyes when she saw her father’s body
being placed in his coffin and the lid nailed shut. Tears burned in the back of
her eyes and she swallowed against the pain of remembering how she had been
forced to slap Ainsley.

The slap had stopped Ainsley’s screaming, but the silence
that followed was worse, much, much worse. Dear God, if only she had noticed
her daughter, been aware of her tiny presence and taken her from the room
before she saw the deed done. Perhaps, if she hadn’t been so swallowed up in
her own grief, she would have realized what it must have meant to a child to
see what Ainsley had seen. But she hadn’t—not until two days after the funeral,
when the children’s nanny remarked to her that Ainsley was strangely silent.

At first the doctors said it would pass, that the shock of
seeing her father sealed in a coffin would gradually fade from her young mind.
They said, too, that when it did, her speech would return.

The past year had been difficult for Maggie as well as
Ainsley, and Maggie felt as if she had watched helplessly as her daughter lived
in a world of silence. It was a level of existence that was neither Heaven nor
hell, but a lost place that lay somewhere in between.

In time, the doctor’s words had proven true. It had been
over a year now, and Ainsley’s speech had returned, but she was quieter than
she had been, and she didn’t laugh as much.

Maggie looked at the concerned face of her longtime minister
and friend, David MacDonald. Somehow she did not find the comfort, the solace,
in that face that she once had. It made her feel abandoned and hollow. God
had
turned against her.